Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Hi there, I'm having some difficulties with colour in Qimage Ultimate. I have created my own colour profiles using my X-Rite basic pro2 in i1Profiller and when running them through Photoshop they come out perfect. When I use Qimage they aren't anywhere near the same quality. The Qimage prints are much darker and it looks as though a bunch of colours have banded together which makes the print look pixelated. When looking at the soft proofer in Qimage I get similar effect so it appears that it might be the interpretation of the profiles though they are standard profiles in RBG so I don't understand why. The soft proof is also generally a poor interpretation of the actual image, when viewing the soft proof next to the image both in Qimage there are artefacts all over the soft proof which aren't on the image in the image viewer.

As far as I can tell all of the settings and the rendering intents are the same as in Photoshop and the same as I use when using my Epson standard drivers. I have checked that I am not doubling up on profiles and I have tried multiple drives.

Hopefully I'm doing something sill with the settings. I have a bunch of screenshots but I don't think I can upload them. I guess if you want to see them I can email you them.

Thanks,
Ben

here are the other two screen shots, the forum only allows so much data to be uploaded so I needed to split it.

Benny,
I can see one setting that is wrong. The rendering intent is set to Absolute Colorimetric; should be Perceptual, or Relative Colorimetric.
If you research Absolute Colorimetric, that is a no-no for photographic reproduction.

Try  a reset on that.
 I would render a guess that you have the Photo Shop rendering set to Relative colorimetric.  
.... or possibly PS is ignoring the setting and substituting.
Also, in your PS shot, it warns you to remember to turn off color management. Did You?
Fred

Thanks for the response. The settings are absolute in both Qimage and Photoshop so even if I am rendering in a non-conventional way then they should both be the same. The second post has the screenshot of the Photoshop settings I used for print.

Benny, I cannot really know without you sending me the profile, but what I am guessing, is that ABSOLUTE is a no no setting for photos unless it is a tattoo with a color.   It is possible, seen it before, that PS is ignoring the AC setting and using perceptual.
Please try setting the rendering intent to RC in Qimage and see what kind of print you get.

Fred

So what my issue is is that in Photoshop when I click print and input my profile I get a soft proof and then when I print the print matches that soft proof. When I do the same in Qimage the soft proof looks totally different no matter what rendering intent I set and the print is much darker and some of the colours seem to clump together. I'm not at the printers any more so I can't change the settings and print but I have printed using various settings for rendering intent and I didn't make any progress. Regardless, since I'm using absolute colormetric on both the result should be the same, which it is not. I appreciate that there may have been an instance where Photoshop was changing the rendering intent without notification but since my print matches my soft proof I can't see how this is happening.

Essentially I just need the colour quality from Photoshop and the imposition and queue tools from Qimage.

You'd better read this article that Mike wrote some time ago.
Your problem is an "old chestnut" and probably related to using the correct settings in QU, hence Mike wrote the article.

http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/may-2011-printing-the-same-colors-in-qimage-ultimate-and-photoshop/ (http://ddisoftware.com/tech/articles/may-2011-printing-the-same-colors-in-qimage-ultimate-and-photoshop/)

Terry

I need to make one more comment in an effort to help you.
When I ask you to change the intent to perceptual or Relative Colorimetric, this is not a big deal.
You do not have to remake your profile.
See screen snap. You only have to change the dot location in the profile settings.
Your profile should contain the intents within itself.
If not, profile is defective.
Simple thing to try.
Fred

PS Please send the profile, email to wathree.ssz@verizon.net

Sounds like it could be a mal-formed profile but I'd need the profile to examine it to be sure.  Wouldn't be the first time I've seen that from a profile creation tool.  Qimage follows the ICC specification even if a profile has corrupted tables or conflicting data (like bad black points, etc).  Photoshop is known to prune profiles if it finds bad or conflicting data in the profiles and it can even ignore the profile completely if it "sees something it doesn't like" in the profile.  There are pros and cons to the "pruning" approach.  Sometimes it can correct bad LUTs and make the profile look better.  Sometimes it can actually make it look worse or cause it to be ignored entirely (without warning).  The main problem with that approach is you never really know what it's doing as there is no indication (from PS) that it just did something to try to fix a bad profile.

So basically the only time you'll see a difference in color between QU and PS is if either the settings are different or the profile is corrupted internally.

Regards,
Mike

Thanks everyone for your advise, after wasting a whole bunch of ink and paper and trying different profiles i'm pretty sure that it is infact the profile that I have made. I don't have the issue with the standard Epson profiles. Do you guys know much about ICC profiles? Is there any chance I could email my profile over and you might be able to tell me if I've done something wrong with it? I created a brand new profile yesterday and I'm having the same issue so it's probably me doing something stupid. I'm using X-rite's i1Profiler with i1 basic pro 2 if that shines any light.

I'm gong to post it onto a couple of print forums too for some more advice.

Thanks again for all of the comments and ideas.

Benny,
Of course we can have a look in the profile.
Mike asked you to send it to him, and I asked you to send it to me too. I even put my email address in my post for you.
wathree.ssz@verizon.net

Waiting....
Fred

Thanks Fred, email has been sent.

Thanks for the profile; Fred gave me a copy to test.  I've now done all comparisons (Perceptual, Relative Colorimetric, and Absolute Colorimetric) with BPC both on, then off for each.  For each setting (chosen rendering intent and BPC), both test sets had identical color between QU and Photoshop when using a very challenging profile testing image, so the profile is fine.

So now that we know QU is sending the same color data to the driver (as PS) when using this profile, we are down to QU/driver settings.  If there is a difference (even with Absolute Colorimetric), the difference is being caused by either the color management settings being different (rendering intent and BPC) or a difference in driver settings.  Perhaps in the driver settings, color management isn't turned off in QU and it is in PS (or vice versa).  But there is a difference somewhere in that driver if you are sure you made the same selections for rendering intent and BPC in both.

With that said, keep in mind that there are a few other things that can make images look different in QU since it allows filters:

(1) If you edited the image in QU, it could have an associative filter that won't be read by PS.
(2) If you have a global filter or print filter active (on the Settings tab) in QU, that can affect color.
(3) If QU is reading a different embedded profile than PS.

Although I've never seen #3 happen, you can check this by hovering your mouse cursor over the thumbnail for the image and looking at the status bar at the bottom of the QU main window: it'll show you what profile is embedded in the image.  You can compare that to the color space that PS reports when you open the image.

Regards,
Mike

Thanks for the tips Mike. I have however been making a bit of a fool of myself. I have been trying and trying to get this to work but the issues actually seems to be that the profile wasn't installed. I assumed that to since I could get access to the profile I didn't need to install it. All it took was a right click and install and everything seems to be fine.

Sorry for wasting everybody's time but thanks for all the help.

Ben

Ben, we are happy the the problem is solved, but your explanation is not coming out clear.
INSTALLING only places the profile in the correct folder so you can select more easily.
System32\Spool|drivers|Color

If you had the correct profile selected in Qimage and saw it showing in SETTINGS, It would work.
See screen snap.
No matter  what folder the profile was located, if you selected it, and had the driver color off, it works.

Just curious for other new users to understand.....

Fred

Hi Ben,
When a profile is made, the software usually "installs" the profile automatically, ie. places it in the System32\Spool|drivers|Color folder .
Fred said: In your first post your screen shot of your settings showed a profile called "CL 7900 matte 28.03.17.icm".
So was this the correct profile?
If so then colours should have been ok. and some other settings were not right.

Like Fred, Just curious for other new users to understand....

Terry

While QU allows you to select a profile from anywhere, most other programs don't.  So I see a couple possibilities.  If it wasn't "installed", QU could use it but PS can't... so maybe no profile (or a different profile) was being used in PS, causing a discrepancy between QU and PS.  The only other thing that can happen here is that some printers (drivers) allow you to associate certain profiles with certain papers in the driver.  If you have QU set to "Let printer/driver manage color" and you expect the driver to be using the correct profile internally, it won't if it isn't "installed".

That's all I can think of.

Mike